Posted
by
CowboyNeal
on Saturday November 04, 2006 @10:08AM
from the hotel-americana dept.

jo7hs2 writes "The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has proposed a system which will in essence make it mandatory for you to have permission before leaving or entering the country, effectively putting everyone on a no-fly list unless the government says otherwise. Interestingly, the proposal does not seem to cover personal travel, only that on some sort of carrier like an airline or cruise vessel. While this certainly is concerning, it isn't exactly new, as a passport is already required for circumstances covered under the proposal."

"Naturally the common people don't want war; neither in Russia, nor in England, nor in America, nor in Germany. That is understood. But after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship....Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country."

I recently came across this quote about exploiting nationalism, and it disturbed me for two reasons. First, it is a very accurate description of the post 9/11 political situation, which has resulted in the loss of civil liberties, the disastrous occupation of Iraq, secret prisons, torture, and the dismantling of the government's system of checks and balances. Second, the author is Hermann Goering.

Godwin's Law, I know, but there are some eerie parallels, and that's scary as hell. I am truly afraid for my country's future. These are dark times; it's the worst I've ever seen the United States of America. We've got the monkeys running the zoo... these are small, foolish, and dangerous little men- Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld. And they are tearing the country apart. They've got the left hating the right and the right hating the left. They've got us caught up in an eternal war against terror (as if you can wage war on a military tactic, that's as nonsensical as a "war against flanking maneuvers"). In their war, in order to save our freedoms from the terrorists, they've got to take our freedoms away. Meanwhile, our executive branch is obsessed with using torture to the point that it starts to seem creepily sadistic, running secret prisons and shipping people off to be tortured in foreign countries. Finally, we've got to keep fighting endlessly in Iraq as it spirals into civil war, and I still haven't heard something that even vaguely resembles a strategy for success, or a convincing explanation of why we even went in, and killed thousands of our own men and tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians.

I've always criticized America, not because I hate her, but because I love her and want her to be better. I thought there was a lot wrong with the country, but I believed it was basically a good country, and that other nations had a lot to learn from us. But now, when I travel through foreign countries, I am ashamed to show my American passport. I actually tell people I'm "coming from Canada" (misleading but true, because that's where I study). Living abroad, I now realize that deep down, I still do love America. But not the America of George Bush. That America is an America of constant fear, divisive hate, endless war, domestic spying, and torture. And we can do better than George Bush's America.

While this certainly is concerning, it isn't exactly new, as a passport is already required for circumstances covered under the proposal."

This is ratcheting up the control of the citizenry - and it is exactly like the Soviet system. Anyone who disagrees with this assessment is both ignorant and uneducated - there is no middle ground on this, period!

I am once again struck by the 2004 presidential election. At that time I lived in Seattle, and the young, seemingly educated

The AC is absolutely right -- this is nowhere near the oppression of the Soviet system. However, it is definitely a step in that direction, and a step that I believe we should work strenuously to reverse.

Now I wonder whether, having said that, I have just rendered myself ineligible for approval for travel abroad...

No, you will be taxed an additional 10-20% to help cover it. Anyone who opposes this tax increase will be demonized as someone who "voted against saving our asses from the terrorists ZOMG!!!!11 Z". Lather, rinse, repeat.

I don't know, I don't have a passport, and I've never had one in the past. I've been to quite a few Caribbean islands (for half a day of course) and nobody there (Jamaica, Cayman, Puerto Rico, several non-US Virgin Islands) has ever needed as passport from U.S. citizen on a cruise ship. Same goes for the airports flying to and from Mexico.

Even though it was permissible to do this in the past I never felt comfortable travelling outside the US without a passport. I've travelled with some non-US citizens working or studying in the who have had problems entering the US on return - after seeing this I've always felt it was a good idea to have the documentation.

this happened to me. my passport expired and i needed to travel out of the country asap. i was warned that reentry would be a bitch. it was.

i work in film as a risk assessment consultant. i was detained for 6 hours upon return from filming in st. lucia. this was on a large film that exhibited this past year. a full background check was performed and I was interrogated by marshals at JFK under the watch of two national guardsmen with m-16s at the ready. i was told that as an "unemployed single multi-ethnic male under 30 without documents" that I essentially triggered all of their flags. I clearly wasn't unemployed - and a significant part of my time was spent explaining "consultant" to them. I was interrogated (pardon my ignorance in this) using a technique whereby I was asked the same question several times - basic questions like my date of birth and the names of my parents and the schools i went to, etc. They also asked questions like: "So how long did you spend in Brazil?" when it had already been established that I'd gone to st. lucia. many other questions were asked in this manner in rapid succession with several men staring intently at me, with another comparing my answers to something onscreen. Their voices were raised and stern; weapons were casually brandished. my frustration at being asked the same thing over and over without recourse was considered an act of "aggression" which according to them justified the brandishing of weapons.

My laptop and pda were turned on and I presume given a thorough looking over. my cell phone was turned on and call lists were duplicated. apparently, they confirmed my information to grade school, apologized for the intrusion and sent me on my way, at which point the airline said they didn't know where my luggage was. another hour later, my luggage was "found" - with my bags clearly rifled through.

There are some legal proceedings under way in regards to this action. the funny thing about this incident is that one of the international sales agents on this film was actually illegal here in the US at the time and he shares the last name of a famous currently incarcerated former mid-east leader. he expressed having a strong case of nerves whenever reentering, and was less than cool about it when we hit the arrival gates. we both hit the gates at the same time - i was stopped, and he breezed through without a second look. So in this instance, while I was apparently profiled in some way, the most obvious guy to profile in this situation was not.

Not only that, but this provision requires you to request clearance upon every entrance/exit from the country. With a passport, you just need the passport. You don't have to get your 'papers in order' first.

Passport Passport Requirements
If you are planning travel for 2007 or beyond, please take a minute to review the passport policy below. If you don't already have a valid passport, be sure to avoid the rush and give yourself plenty of time to apply for one. Once you've got a passport in hand, the whole world is yours to explore.

U.S. Citizen Passport Requirement

Air Travel

Effective January 8, 2007, passports will be required for all U.S. citizens flying to or f

New US passports have biometric information, correct?So when a large % of US citizens have to get passports (for their own country! heh!) that means that the US has a large pool of biometric information. Smells of Negroponte.

I believe that that is about to change. I remember seeing something to the effect that after date xx/xx/xx you will have to have a passport to enter or leave the US, even to "friendly" destinations like Canada or the caribbean. I'll try to dig up the reference... ah, here we are:http://travel.state.gov/travel/cbpmc/cbpmc_2223.ht ml [state.gov] (scroll down a bit)

Hmm, I wonder if this story is a misinterpretation of that policy change? The dates are in January...

"...the [Supreme] Court held that the right to travel is an inherent element of "liberty" that cannot be denied to American citizens. Although the Executive may regulate the travel practices of citizens, by requiring them to obtain valid passports, it may not condition the fulfillment of such requirements with the imposition of rules that abridge basic constitutional notions of liberty, assembly, association, and personal autonomy."Kent v. Dulles357 U.S. 116 (1958)

Why would a birth certificate ever be valid ID? It doesn't have a photograph on it, or anything else that ties it to you. If your birth certificate were valid then anyone who pickpockets you while you are away could use it for entry without modification.

It appears that President George W. Bush has made for himself a place in history.He is creating a constitutional crisis that we will forever be able to point to as a turning point in the history of this great Nation. I happen to believe that there is still enough of the love of liberty alive in the hearts of Americans that they will turn back this would-be tinpot dictator, but not before we are brought to the very brink of existence.

I'm thinking of other moments in our history that the wonderful experiment

Laws are "enacted completely outside of the constitutional legislative process" every day -- thousands upon thousands of them. They're called "regulations", and they are issued by various federal and state agencies that are staffed by unelected officials -- and DHS is one such agency.

Other examples include EPA regulations, FCC regulations, much of what the IRS decides, NLRB decisions, OSHA rules, etc., etc. The agencies are empowered (at least theoretically) by congressional law, but the regulations th

I wasn't suggesting that anything "should be" -- merely pointing out that a Congressional bill is not required for such a story "to have any credibility". From what I understand of the powers of the DHS, such a regulation is entirely within their purview, and would not require Congressional approval.

(For what it's worth, though, what you thought I was suggesting would be consonant with my own preferences... )

That Godwin crap has become yet another tool to be used by UltraCons just like "if you're not with us you're with the terrorists", "You have to give up essential liberties for more security", and "Those Daemoncrats would invite the terrorists into our country and give them the bombs and weapons to use against us". In other words, it's completely worthless in any adult conversation.

Comparing my grandmother's goulasch recipe with Nazi Germany is not a valid comparison.

Comparing the systematic erosion of our basic rights and liberties through the centralization and consolidation of power into the hands of a few people who use Christianity as a weapon against an entire subset of the population to Nazi Germany. That is most definitely a valid comparison.

FTA:"Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union are two countries in recent history
that didn't allow their citizens to travel abroad without permission.
If these regulations go into effect, you can add the United States to
this list."

> > Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union are two countries in recent history that didn't allow their citizens to travel abroad without permission. If these regulations go into effect, you can add the United States to this list.

The difference is that with the Soviet Union the problem was getting OUT, here I suspect there'll be less of a problem getting OUT, and more of one getting back IN... Makes mexican spring break or european vacations pretty exciting, huh?... "We hope (if uncle Sam will kindly allow us back in) to be back on date...".No doubt there's going to be all sorts of horror stories of bureaucratic screw-ups and people delayed abroad for days while they fix it up.

So, when will american citizens occupy the canadian embassy until the canadian foreign minister steps on the balcony [wikipedia.org] and announces: "We have come to you to tell you that your departure..." *cheeringcrowd*

First of all, the US government can't deny you a passport (even if they want you on a no-fly list!) -- see Kent v. Dulles [findlaw.com]. Secondly, US Citizens have the right to enter and leave the US (I can't find the USSC citation -- sorry). This proposal is thus manifestly unconstitutional -- unless they try claiming that "you have the right to leave the US, but not by the means of transportation of your choice". This has worked for the government in the cases about the right to travel anonymously and the airport ide

Another aspect in which this would "help" the Americans is in limiting the number of American youth would would be at risk of exposure to foreign ideals through studies abroad. Today, any American who can afford it could be exposed to all sorts of crazy ideas, just by enrolling in a foreign school. If they also had to ask permission before leaving the country, then many of them would probably not risk their souls in this way.

Sooo, civil liberties issue aside, will this actually remove the option of traveling overseas standby or on a very short notice? Or will DHS have politic^H^H^H^H^H^H^H officers on every international airport to validate people on the spot?

As someone whose parents had to cross the Jugoslav border to Italy in the trunk of an old Fiat because the Polish government wouldn't grant them a passport to leave the communist bloc, I resent this and find it disgusting. If someone's accused of charges that they can fight in a civilian court, then I can understand temporarily taking their passport away. But a civilian court offers the accused a clear means to fight the charges.

Military tribunals and secret decision-making like this are horrible ideas because there's no accountability involved. But what about hard-core terrorists like Osama, those responsible for WTC I and WTC II among other things? If anything, this applies more. I want to see the bastards on trial in a New York courtroom, in public, accountable to the very populace whom they injured and whose families they murdered. Then, since New York has no death penalty, a nice long term in Sing Sing in the same cellblock with the Aryan Brotherhood. Justice doesn't have to be meted out by military courts to be tough or fair.

The second part of your post appears to be completely unrelated to the question at hand. What your opinions are about how Osama should be treated are of little importance here. Furthermore, If you so dearly refer to your enimies, the Arian Brotherhood, to do your bidding, I suggest you go outside and take a breather.

Issues you have with other people should not become the job of a third party. If you want to kill Osama, go get him yourself or stop whining about your irrelevant wishes.

People don't do things for no reason at all. They have a reason, even if its made up or wrongly borrowed.But there is no organization of terrorist or any other type that can build such a suicidal distructive followingwithout some real base line to use as a enlistment and motivational sales tool.

9/11 happened for real reasons, even if borrowed by lunitic extreamist.Winners of the Trillion dollar bet shared with the dot com and cau

Hello american dumbass; justice means obeying the rule of law, not allowing prisoners to be attacked just because you think that's a good idea.

I'm not saying we should allow him to be attacked (or not). I'm saying that life in an American jail isn't exactly pleasant, and special military tribunals aren't needed nor desirable to mete out punishment to those who deserve it.

I'm afraid I don't take these "Friends of Liberty" folks at face value. Their assertions are backed up by a volume of evidence found in similar conspiracy theories. NONE WHATSOEVER.

Read the PDF [hasbrouck.org] listed at the bottom of the press release. The very first paragraph explains the source of their concerns:

The Identity Project submits these comments in response to the Notice of Proposed Rulemaking
(NPRM) published at 71 Federal Register 40035-40048 (July 14, 2006), docket number
USCBP-2005-0003-0003, and th

Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) published at 71 Federal Register 40035-40048 (July 14, 2006), docket numberUSCBP-2005-0003-0003, and the associated "Regulatory Assessment" published July 18, 2006 on theWeb site at and docketed as USCBP-2005-0003-0005.

This is nothing like the fact that we already are required to use a passport for a number of these same reasons.

A passport is documentation to foreign countries that you are a documented U.S. citizen.

Being required to "check out" of the country with DHS, despite all the calls of "Godwin rule" invocations, is exactly like Soviet Russia, Communist Cuba and China, and Nazi Germany, in recent history.

Seriously, if you people don't get out and vote these facists out of office, you're going to be just like the guy from WWII who wrote the poem about how, when there was no one else left, they came for him, and there was no one left to stop them. Enough with the "But I don't have anything to hide". When are you going to realize it's not about, and never has been about, "hunting the terrorists" and "making us safe", it's about "controlling the people", through fear, and travel restrictions, and spying? The more people say "But I dont have anything to hide, let them go ahead", the more they win.

>When are you going to realize it's not about, and never has been about, "hunting the terrorists" and "making us safe"

Exactly. This isn't a "tradeoff" between freedom and safety. This adds exactly zero security against terrorists in any of the following use cases:Known terrorist, enough evidence for trial: should be arrested instead.Known terrorist, not enough evidence for trial: should be put under surveillance, not tipped off by an unusual government action.

One day, older American will weep and younger Americans will be confused by lines like:

Capt. Vasili Borodin: I will live in Montana. And I will marry a round American woman and raise rabbits, and she will cook them for me. And I will have a pickup truck... maybe even a "recreational vehicle." And drive from state to state. Do they let you do that?Captain Ramius: I suppose.Capt. Vasili Borodin: No papers?Captain Ramius: No papers, state to state.Capt. Vasili Borodin: Well then, in winter I will live in... Arizona. Actually, I think I will need two wives.Captain Ramius: Oh, at least.

Over here in Europe I am increasingly hearing people who say they don't want to travel to the USA at the moment, whether for tourism or business. The effect of this kind of thing on tourism would be fairly easy to measure, however the effect on business generally - if businessmen outside of the USA don't want to travel there - is impossible to know.

I thought the Republicans were supposed to be "pro-business" - surely they can understand the potential negative consequences of this kind of thing? Having said that, they don't seem to be worried about the negative effects of their neanderthal foreign policies, so perhaps not.

They're also supposed to be in favor of balanced budgets, realistic foreign policy and strong defense. Not long ago they were all of the above. Today, they are not the party for people who used to support Republicans.

This is a letter to the editor of a major newspaper, not from me:

I have been a registered Republican for more than 25 years. This year, I will not vote for any Republican candidate, regardless of their credentials or positions. I am taking this step because the Republican Party has shown that it is more concerned about its power and prerogatives than it is about the health of this nation.
Members of Congress, I am repulsed by your cynical focus on wedge issues to generate support among the religious right. You have played on the sympathies of the ignorant to buttress your power, and severely damaged the nation while doing so. I am disgusted with your spineless support for our current politics of fear. We had one incident of terrorism five years ago. Why do you continue to allow this to be used as a wrecking ball on our democracy?
Democrats, don't count on me for the long term; you are under the microscope as well. I want to see my legislators research issues, figure out what is right for all Americans, and to take fact-based stands on these issues. Your religious biases are unimportant, and not a basis for governing this country. Step up, or we'll throw you out as well.

What the fuck is wrong with people who will go out and vote more power to Bush and his fucking fascist government this Tuesday?Torture, shredded Habeas Corpus, thousands of kidnapped people in CIA prisons around the world, "signing statements" vowing to break the law he just signed, martial law powers, leaving the country only by his permission... Bush has turned himself into the king of a fascist kingdom,

If you know one of these monsters voting for the Republican Congress in collusion with Bush, do everyth

What the fuck is wrong with people who will go out and vote more power to Bush and his fucking fascist government this Tuesday? Can Bush even be president again? I thought US law only permitted 2 consecutive terms for any president, to offer some protection against evil dictators.

Bush has vetoed only one bill sent him from his Republican Congress: stemcell research. Which, though extremely popular with Americans, wasn't cleared by a veto override.

So sending more Republicans (and "Democrats" like Lieberman (Lieberman-CT)) to Congress on Tuesday, who will rubberstamp Bush the way they've rubberstamped him for 6 years, is voting more power to Bush. Voting for others who will stop Bush, and make laws that actually protect us from evil dictators like Bush, is the way the US law works.

What the fuck is wrong with people who will go out and vote more power to Bush and his fucking fascist government this Tuesday?

Well, it's understandable. Stupid, but understandable. Lots of people get into lots of conflict with their neighbors -- by which I mean, literally, the people who live in the house next door -- because either they or their neighbors don't like the way the other guy lives. In a perfect world, everyone would live the way everyone else does. Because they don't, 50% of the people get

Even though it is very easy for us to sit back and say "those SOBs, how dare they do this to us?" We are the lazy SOBs who didn't fight hard enough to keep those SOBs out of office. Now our fight will be 10 times more difficult and 10 times longer and require 10 times the sacrifice to undo what has been done. And this is not about republicans doing something that the Democrats would not. Even if by some Deibold miracle the Democrats should take back the House, Senate and eventually the White House, they

If you read the article:The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (HSA) has proposed that allairlines, cruise lines-even fishing boats-be required to obtainclearance for each passenger they propose taking into or out of theUnited States.

DHS has been getting manifests for all flights into the country (a smart move that actually is pretty effective), it just seems like they are expanding the program (to other transport methods and now, people leavkng the country) so that they know who is coming and going in th

Okay, so we have a story on a political website ("Friends of Liberty") with a link only to published comments by another political website ("PapersPlease.org") concerning a proposal where the original RFP [gpo.gov] was posted July 14 of this year. Where was the outrage then, where was the irate Slashdot article then?

Could it possibly be that this regulation would not have the effect that the far left claims that it would have?

If you read the regulation proposal, what this regulation change would actually do is require manifests to be transmitted to US Customs before the aircraft pushes back from the gate, rather than 15 minutes after takeoff (which is the current regulation), so that DHS can have do-not-fly list passengers removed from the flight before it takes off rather than causing a possible situation in the air.

This attempt at political chicanery on Slashdot's part is so transparent it's laughable.

Well... pardon me for being just a little bit sceptical about this. In short: I'll believe it when I see it.

The pdf file referred to in the article is authored by the "The first amendment project" (I hadn't heard of them before), and refers to a "Notice of Proposed Rulemaking" (NPRM). I believe that there are probably lots of NPRM's that never make it into any sort of bill that is to be submitted to the House or the Senate.

Now while I can believe that some people in the current administration would ent

While this certainly is concerning, it isn't exactly new, as a passport is already required for circumstances covered under the proposal.

For a while, a passport was not required for Mexico and Canada. Before, a birth certificate was good enough. This is a bit of a nitpick but you do not require a passport to leave any country. You need a passport to enter a country. That's why nobody checks passports as you depart. Now, this rule makes it that your passport is checked leaving and entering. It's a smal

Not true. Airlines check your passport before you depart. They can be fined for delivering passengers that don't have the required documentation to enter the country of their destination. They check when you get your boarding pass and they check again as you board the plane.

For a long time I have maintained that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) is just like the United States of America (USA), but with the intensity cranked to 11.Although I wasn't able to read the article ("We should be back shortly."), the intro paragraph provided a reminder of the KSA practice of requiring all foreigners to obtain an exit and re-entry visa to leave and return to the country. However, not even the Saudis have such a requirement for their own citizens, so in this regard, could the USA take the

I suppose I should expect this from the ever-ready-to do its research Slashdot, but where are the sources for this article?

If you look at this "news site's" front page [sianews.com], you'll see a lot of the traditional conspiracy rantings and, when you look particularly at the traditional Kennedy [sianews.com] conspiracy [sianews.com] nonsense so typical of sites that have completely fallen off their rocker.

This isn't a news site. There's no good sourcing (yes, I followed the URL at the end, see below). The reference stated to this document [regulations.gov] mentions no such restrictions as those found in the Slashdot summary or the article.

There are certainly privacy issues at stake, but nothing near what this ridiculous article or the Slashdot summary make it out to be.

This is just piss poor. I know Slashdot isn't a news site, so I don't expect it to research things as thoroughly as a journalist would (granted, I expect little of journalists as well).

The most pertinent part of the executive summary of the regulation proposal in question reads as follows:

The primary purpose of this proposed rule is to prevent passengers that have beenidentified as high-risk on government watchlists from boarding aircraft bound for ordeparting from the United States and to prevent passengers and crew so identifiedfrom departing on vessels leaving the Unites States. On April 7, 2005, the Bureau ofCustoms and Border Protection (CBP) published requirements for the transmission ofpassenger and crew manifests for aircraft and vessels arriving from foreigndestinations or departing to foreign destinations (70 FR 17820). Implementation of the"2005 APIS Rule" (named for the Advance Passenger Information System, the CBPelectronic system used to obtain electronic manifest information from carriers)required that information on passengers and crew to be transmitted: no later than 15minutes after departure for arriving aircraft passengers; no later than 15 minutes priorto departure for departing aircraft passengers; at least 60 minutes prior to departurefor arriving and departing aircraft crew; at least 24 hours and as much as 96 hoursprior to a vessel's entry at a US port for arriving passengers and crew, depending onthe length of the voyage; and 15 minutes prior to departure for departing vesselpassengers and crew.

Are there privacy issues here? You betcha. And they've been discussed here at length. Do they approach what the article and its summary here state they approach? Not at all. Read the rest of the proposed regulation.

As you wish. The article cites one on PassportsPlease.org, a direct link from that article is to the World Privacy Forum's submitted objection to the change:

"The Identity Project submits these comments in response to the Notice of Proposed Rulemaking(NPRM) published at 71 Federal Register 40035-40048 (July 14, 2006), docket numberUSCBP20050003-0003, and the associated Regulatory Assessment published July 18, 2006 on theWeb site at and docketed as USCBP-2005-0003-00

The primary purpose of this proposed rule is to prevent passengers that have beenidentified as high-risk on government watchlists from boarding aircraft bound for ordeparting from the United States

I think the problem is that getting onto one of these "watchlists" is not particularly hard. Who decides who gets on the list? If you are on such a list, would you know it? Would you have any opportunity to challenge your presence on the list? How hard would it be to declare someone on such a list to be an "unlawf

The freedom of association is paramount. This means the right to exit to find other associations, as well as block entry to others with whom one does not wish to associate, is paramount. All other conceptions of human rights can be derived from such freedom of association.

The only time blocking exit is acceptable is when someone has violated freedom of association in some way -- has gained entry under false pretenses or has acted as agent of a foreign association within your association -- in which case

I have to tell you that I agree with a lot of what you are saying. I'm a 2nd generation immigrant who was raised on lectures about how wonderful America was and anecdotes outlining the superiority of American government and culture. Honestly I found the changes in America so repellent I moved and in doing so I learned a few interesting things.

Americans have no idea what communism or socialism is... or if they do they do not use this knowledge when exhorting the evils of these systems. Nor do they have an tangible idea about what police states or totalitarian states are.

The failure of unions is that they are abused by those people who profit by people being in them, if everyone was in a union of some sort (or none at all) this would not be possible or at least more difficult to pull off.

The US dollar sucks.

The US by many metrics isn't the best place in the world to live. A notable exception is making buckets of cash.

US Foreign policy is nothing short of evil.

Racism is more of a problem in America than people want to admit.

Xenophobia is a significant problem in America.

The American system of government is broken and given the behavior of Americans it appears altogether beyond their capacity to fix it.

You can not live in a "nice" society without paying for it... via taxes.

It's in all of our interests to do what we can to raise everyone we can to a certain level (I mean a level above Henry Ford's auto assemblers and Ray Kroc's fast food workers). This means public schooling, accessible health care, &tc...

You cannot create a better society by legislating morality but you sure as hell can make it worse.

Who says we wouldn't be in the same or a worse mess if Gore was elected? The groundwork for our current mess was laid under previous presidents.

As far as voting Libertarian, if everyone feels that way about a less-known but optimal candidate or party, then we're bound to get stuck with suboptimal representatives! Ultimately, the solution to this problem is election reform. Give each voter more than one vote in a given election, allow them to rank candidates in order of preference, or go with approval v

At every turn a good republican should ask if what they are doing helps the people and minimizes the control the government has over the people. They are clearly not doing the latter, and the former [is] arguable.

No, not really.

Your party has historically been for many things, but "small government" was never really one of them. It was just a way to say they were "anti-socialist" or "anti-welfare" without being negative. The party you describe would be against drug laws or outlawing abortion as much as it's against gun control.

The left/right divide comes down to the division of Right and Proper -- the Right-wing desires the government to do that which is morally correct, while the left desires the government do that which is legally proper. there are, of course, other metrics you might use to divide the two, but "big government / small government" isn't one of them.

Fortunately, the armed forces are made up of humans (for now), and those humans have family and friends in the civilian sector. When they're ordered to turn on American civilians, it won't be the revolutionaries against the military, it will be the revolutionaries AND a good portion of the military against the remainder of the gove